Caribbean Population & Demographics

From The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, ed. by Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (U. Chicago Press, 2013), Kindle pp. 34-35:

The size of the region’s indigenous population at the time of European contact is not known. Spanish chroniclers estimated the population at 1 million, but modern anthropologists argue that the numbers were much higher, between 6 and 12 million, with large populations on Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. Tragically, these peoples and their societies were decimated within a few decades of contact, by Old World diseases, slave labor, emigration, and suicide. However, recent mitochondrial DNA studies of present populations have revealed a high Native American contribution, which suggests extensive sexual encounters between Spanish men and native women during the conquest period. Several thousand descendants of the Caribs still live on the island of Dominica, while “Black Caribs,” people of mixed Carib, African, and Taino descent, live in northern St. Vincent. The mountainous volcanic island of St. Vincent was so successfully defended by the Caribs that it was one of the last of the Lesser Antilles to be colonized. After their defeat by the British, several thousand Black Caribs were deported in 1797 to an island off the coast of Honduras. Their descendants eventually settled on the Caribbean coast of Central America between Belize and Nicaragua, where they created a distinctive Garifuna culture.

The insular nature of the Caribbean region is significant because islands provided opportunities for colonial powers to establish defensible colonies during periods of intense European rivalry and warfare. Neighboring islands belonging to different colonial powers had little contact with each other, so despite their common histories, islands acquired some of the distinctive cultural traits of their colonists’ mother countries, especially with respect to language and styles of governance—a legacy that has contributed to the cultural diversity of the region today.

Caribbean populations increased significantly under slavery, when more than four million people were brought from Africa, dramatically shaping the future ethnic composition of the population. A second important wave of immigration took place in the decades after emancipation, when large numbers of indentured laborers were brought from Asia to alleviate labor shortages on the plantations. Between 1835 and 1917, almost 700,000 workers arrived from British India and another 150,000 came from China, primarily into Trinidad and British Guiana, while approximately 50,000 from the Dutch East Indies (mainly Java) settled in Suriname. After completing their indentured service, many laborers stayed on, encouraged by land grants and prospects for economic advancement, further enriching the cultural diversity of Caribbean societies. Today, people of East Indian descent form the largest ethnic group in Trinidad and Guyana (formerly British Guiana). Tens of thousands of Western Europeans (mostly Spaniards) also arrived in the Hispanophone Caribbean during the 19th and 20th centuries.

By 1960 the Caribbean population had reached 17 million, and it has since more than doubled to 40 million. Cuba, the largest island, has 11 million people, and the Greater Antilles together account for more than 90% of the region’s total. In terms of language groupings, about 64% of the people live in the Spanish-speaking countries (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico) and 22% live in French-speaking territories (mainly Haiti). Only about 6 million people live in English-speaking countries, two-thirds of whom live in either Jamaica (2.7 million) or Trinidad and Tobago (1.4 million). Islands such as Antigua, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada have populations between 100,000 and 200,000, while St. Kitts and Nevis has only 40,000.

Not surprisingly, population densities are high by international standards, with an average of 66 people per square mile. However, as with other demographic statistics, there is considerable variability from island to island. The highest population densities are in Barbados (1,663 per square mile), Aruba (1,479), and Puerto Rico (1,115), while the lowest are in the Bahamas (60) and the Turks and Caicos Islands (127). The population densities are even lower in continental French Guiana (3), Suriname (7), and Guyana (10) because their populations are geographically concentrated in the lowland coastal areas, while the interior rainforests and savannas are relatively unpopulated.